31 December, 2016

Instead of
trying to save anything left from his reputation, Barack Obama
proceeded in one more action that put the final gravestone on it. The
preposterous action of the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats,
demonstrates the tragic dead-end which the US foreign policy
currently faces.

Obama
'managed' to:

Reduce
the behaviour of a superpower into that of a minor country that acts
carelessly.

Expose
the decline of the US empire.

Give
extra credits to Russia, especially after the 'checkmate' from Putin
who took advantage of this absolutely irresponsible action,
declaring, indirectly, that he will not act with the same
irresponsibility.

Give
extra credits to Donald Trump who has been presented as an 'oncoming
disaster' by the mainstream media. Compared to Obama's
irresponsibility, Trump will look as a much more responsible
president who tries to normalize relations with Russia, instead of
dangerously ruin them.

Apart from
the fact that the leaks were showing the dirty games of the
Democratic party, even against its own candidates, like Bernie
Sanders, there is actually no evidence that Russia was involved in
the leaks.

Obama also
proved that he is the most easily handled puppet by the neocons and
the US deep state who show, however, that they are in panic, after
their absolute failure in meeting their goals in Syria and elsewhere.

Obama
dragged in dirty proxy wars that brought absolute chaos in the Middle
East, Libya and elsewhere. Now, he was dragged in another totally
irresponsible action against Russia.

With the
extra credits from this action, Trump will come in full force to wipe
out what is left of the US middle class, securing the interests of
the plutocracy.

On Thursday,
the FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a joint analysis
report addressing persistent allegations that the Russian government
hacked the U.S. election.

Though, as
the White House fact sheet asserts, the report largely consists of
tips to improve cyber security and prevent future attacks, it also
appears to cite evidence Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) actively
attempted to hack into U.S. systems, a campaign the government has
named “GRIZZLY STEPPE.”

But as the
media runs with the story and many outlets accept the 13-page report
as fact, veterans of the intelligence community have pointed out
flaws with the FBI-DHS analysis.

According to
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA agent, the report fails to prove Russia
is behind the hack. In a recent Facebook post, he asserted that
“apart from assertions of Russian activity connected to an
unnamed political party, [the report] provides absolutely no evidence
that the alleged intrusions into the DNC servers were anything beyond
normal intelligence agency probing for vulnerabilities.”

30 December, 2016

The typical
pettiness and vengefulness of the Obama administration was at full
display with yesterday's expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the
closing of two Russian estates in New York and Maryland. Obama also
sanctioned the Russian external intelligence service FSB and the
military intelligence service GRU as well as some of its leaders for
doing their job.

The move was
ostensibly over alleged but completely unproven Russian "hacking"
to influence the U.S. election. But the real reason is likely Obama's
loss of face after being left out of the successful negotiations of a
new ceasefire in Syria.

True to form
the Russian government responded with high-class trolling and
generosity.

29 December, 2016

Russian
military forces have discovered mass graves in eastern parts of the
Syrian city of Aleppo, with many of the bodies reportedly showing
signs of torture.

Maj. Gen.
Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for the Russian defense ministry,
announced the horrifying discovery on Monday. “Many of the
corpses were found with missing body parts, and most had gunshot
wounds to the head,” he said, according to RT, a Russian
state-owned news network.

Until
recently, the eastern portion of Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city
and industrial and financial center, was under the control of
so-called “moderate” rebels, many of whom have received both
intelligence and material support from the United States and its
allies in the Middle East.

Last week,
Russian and Syrian military forces oversaw the evacuation of
civilians from eastern Aleppo. Prior to that, the rebel-held portion
of the city had been controlled by two main factions, Jabhat
al-Nusra, a terrorist group with ties to al-Qaida also known as the
Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham, another extremist group that receives
U.S. support despite being designated a terrorist organization.

In an
apparent attempt to court the U.S. government by distancing itself
from al-Qaida, the Nusra Front recently attempted to “rebrand”
itself. Despite efforts to market themselves as kinder, gentler
terrorists, the group has continued to commit atrocities, including
burning buses intended to be used in the evacuation and even blocking
food aid from reaching Aleppo’s starving residents. WikiLeaks’
archive of diplomatic cables reveals that the United States, Israel,
and Saudi Arabia have sought to overthrow the government of Syrian
leader Bashar Assad since at least 2006, and support for extremist
fighters remains a key part of that strategy.

Konashenkov
promised a full investigation into the war crimes of rebel forces in
Aleppo, suggesting in his statement that the results would surprise
many people who receive their news from Western mainstream media
sources. He said: “The completion of a uniquely large-scale
humanitarian operation by the Russian Center for Reconciliation in
Aleppo will destroy many of the myths that have been fed to the world
by Western politicians. The results of only an initial survey of
Aleppo neighborhoods abandoned by the so-called ‘opposition’ will
shock many.”

Russian
forces also found massive stockpiles of weaponry abandoned by fleeing
rebel groups. “In one small area, three tanks, two cannons, two
multiple rocket launchers and numerous homemade mortars were found,”
reported RT.

Throughout
the civil war, weaponry and equipment provided by the United States
and its allies, nominally intended for so-called “moderate”
groups like the Free Syrian Army, has instead ended up in the hands
of terrorist groups like the Nusra Front. A BBC report from December
of 2015 referred to the shipments of supplies from the West as a
“Wal-Mart” for extremists.

While
journalists on the ground have documented atrocities carried out by
rebel groups throughout the Syrian conflict, the mainstream media has
focused almost entirely on reports of war crimes committed by the
Syrian government, even though many of those reports are impossible
to verify.

False news
about Syria has continued to proliferate in recent days, including
reports of genocide carried out by the Syrian government that
featured fake or recycled photos.

The U.S.
sold more weapons than any other country in 2015 despite a drop in
the global arms trade, according to a new congressional report.

At $40
billion, the U.S. signed more than half of all arms agreements last
year, and more than double the next-highest seller, which was France
at $15 billion. American weapons sales included bombs, missiles,
armored tanks, Apache attack helicopters, F-15 fighter jets, and
other items.

The report
was published by the Congressional Research Service, which conducts
national policy analysis for Congress. It looked at conventional arms
transfers to developing nations from 2008 to 2015.

Russia sold
$11.1 billion, a slight drop from its 2014 count at $11.2 billion.
China sold $6 billion, doubling its output from last year.

The leading
buyers, meanwhile, were Qatar, which signed deals to purchase more
than $17 billion; Egypt, which signed on for $12 billion; and Saudi
Arabia, which purchased more than $8 billion.

Many of
those weapons have gone to aid the Saudi-led, U.S.-supported
coalition fighting rebels in Yemen at a high civilian price. As
anti-war activist and Common Dreams contributor Medea Benjamin wrote
in August, “American weapons are drenched in Yemeni blood.”

2015 also
marks the eighth year in a row that the U.S. has led the world in
global arms deliveries, even as many other countries cut back on
their arms spending over “domestic budget” concerns, as study
author Catherine A. Theohary put it.

The Guardian
noted on Tuesday that the findings comport with another recent study
that found the Obama administration had approved more than $278
billion in eight years, more than double that of the Bush
administration, which sold $128.6 billion.

28 December, 2016

After the
complete collapse of Western propaganda
concerning Syria and the Middle East chaos, the 'blame game' within
NATO allies has started. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
said "it's very clear" that the US-led coalition is
supporting terrorist groups in Syria, ISIS among them!

"They
give support to terrorist groups including Daesh (Arabic for IS),"
Erdogan said. Saying that the US have accused Turkey of supporting
IS, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday the Turkish leader
blamed the US-led coalition for assisting terrorists themselves.

Apart
from IS, he also mentioned Kurdish People's Protection Units in
northern Syria (YPG) and Democratic Union Party (PYD) as groups
supported by the coalition. "We have confirmed evidence, with
pictures, photos and videos," he added.

Erdogan
has also called on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join Russia, Turkey and
Iran in peace talks on Syria. On Tuesday, the Turkish leader said
officials of these Gulf states should be included in the talks of
foreign ministers in Kazakhstan next month, as their countries had
"shown goodwill and given support'' to Syria, AP
reported.

However,
the Turkish president stressed that Ankara itself would not take part
should Syrian Kurdish groups - whom he called "terrorist
organizations" - be invited to take part in the meeting.

Commenting
on Ankara's accusations, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner
said Erdogan's claims were "ludicrous."

Saying
that there is "no basis for truth" in Erdogan's
statement, Toner added that Washington is "100 percent behind
the defeat and destruction of Daesh, even beyond Syria and Iraq."

[...]

"The
evidence [mentioned by Erdogan] is quite ample, [the US] have been
doing it for a number of years, including running secret CIA
operations through Jordan, then through Turkey and into Syria,"
Michael Maloof, a security analyst and former Pentagon official, told
RT. He added that Erdogan's comments were "disingenuous,"
however, as "he continues to supply arms [into Syria] as
well, with his ultimate aim [being] to go after the Kurds, and ISIS
is secondary." On Tuesday, Moscow also accused Washington of
"sponsoring terrorism" in Syria.

Recall that
various sources point to the role of Turkey under Erdogan in
providing some form of assistance to the jihadists. Only a small
sample follows:

Bilal
Erdogan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed
contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil
to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi
plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil
wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in
Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude
oil in Japan-bound oil tankers. In addition to son Bilal’s illegal
and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of
the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside
Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily
being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent
back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of
a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she
was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad who Erdogan seems hell-bent on toppling.

WikiLeaks
has released a cache of thousands of personal emails allegedly from
the account of senior Turkish government minister Berat Albayrak,
son-in-law of the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which it
says shows the extent of links between Mr Albayrak and a company
implicated in deals with Isis-controlled oil fields. [...] Turkish
media reported in 2014 and 2015 that Powertrans has been accused of
mixing in oil produced by Isis in neighbouring Syria and adding it to
local shipments which eventually reached Turkey, although the charges
have not been substantiated by any solid evidence.

Note
that, very recently, the US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced a bill
so that the US to stop arming terrorists, naming specifically
Al-Qaeda and ISIS
among them! In some interviews she also named CIA as the agency that
supports terrorist groups in the Middle East, as well as US allies
that provide assistance to these groups, like Saudi Arabia, Turkey
and Qatar.

The war of accusations from every side confirms the
total mess in Middle East that came from dirty proxy-wars. Erdogan's
statements and US response prove the level of degeneration of
US-Turkey relations and how ridiculously the NATO allies try to clear
their dirty wars and agendas, after the complete collapse of
propaganda against Assad, Russia and Iran.

As expected, Erdogan is not giving up from his primary
target, the Kurds.

As
mentioned
previously: “Turkey also exploits the
current chaos and tries to crush Kurdish resistance. One of the
reasons that supports ISIS is to use it against the Kurds. It is a
sub-proxy war by Turkey in the area according to its own agenda. The
US are probably not very happy with that, because they want to use
ISIS in full force against Assad and consider Kurds as allies.”

27 December, 2016

Automation
through robots and other artificial intelligence could affect nearly
half of all US jobs, a report from the Obama administration has
found. Education and job-training programs could prevent the sea
change from destroying the American economy.

Scientists
and economic advisers within the executive branch studied the
potential effects of artificial intelligence on the US workforce and
economy over the next 20 years, as well as ways to prevent the
technological advances from automation from potentially destroying
job opportunities for Americans ‒ which they said it could, for up
to 47 percent of jobs. Rather, the authors sought to guide the
government’s automation policy to create better economic
opportunities for the country as a whole.

“These
transformations will open up new opportunities for individuals, the
economy, and society, but they have the potential to disrupt the
current livelihoods of millions of Americans,” the 55-page
report said. “Whether AI leads to unemployment and increases in
inequality over the long-run depends not only on the technology
itself but also on the institutions and policies that are in place.”

The authors
compared use of AI to how the Industrial Revolution introduced mass
production to the economy, which negatively affected the livelihoods
of skilled craftsman, as well as to the rise of computers in the
workplace, which benefited white-collar workers.

“Output
per hour rose [in the 19th Century] while inequality declined,
driving up average living standards, but the labor of some high-skill
workers was no longer as valuable in the market,” they wrote.
“The advent of computers and the Internet raised the relative
productivity of higher-skilled workers.”

[...]

Although the
report cautioned that it’s difficult to predict exactly how robots
and other AI might change the economy in the future because it’s
“not a single technology, but rather a collection of
technologies that are applied to specific tasks,” the authors
noted that the trend has been similar to what happened with
computerization that occurred at the end of the 20th and start of the
21st centuries. AI could affect as little as 9 percent of jobs over
the next decade or two ‒ or it could threaten nearly half of all
jobs.

A September
report released by Forrester Research found that 6 percent of jobs
could be taken by “early-stage intelligent agents,” as
soon as 2021. In November, a brief from the United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) claimed that up to two-thirds of
all jobs in the developing world could be replaced by automation.
More than 1.3 million Brits could lost their jobs to computers by
2030, according to research by Oxford University and consultancy firm
Deloitte.

Although
“AI-driven automation has yet to have a quantitatively major
impact on productivity growth,” the administration’s report
said, industries such as transportation and fast food are already
seeing the results of automation, thanks to self-driving cars and the
use of kiosks and other automated ordering systems.

Turkish
security forces have arrested a high-ranking official of the
pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) over an investigation
related to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group as
Ankara presses ahead with a massive clampdown on members of the
opposition party

A police
source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a counter-terrorism
team had detained Aysel Tugluk in the capital, Ankara, on Monday
morning as part of an investigation launched by the Diyarbakir Chief
Public Prosecutor's Office against the PKK and the Kurdistan
Communities Union (KCK), an alliance of pro-Kurdish groups. Tugluk
has been taken to police headquarters and will be later transferred
to the southeastern province of Diyarbakir.

Last month,
13 HDP legislators were arrested over alleged links to the PKK
militant group. Party leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag
remain in custody along with eight others, waiting to stand trial on
terrorism-related charges.

A shaky
ceasefire between the PKK, which has been calling for an autonomous
Kurdish region since 1984, and the Turkish government collapsed in
July 2015. Attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.

Over the
past few months, Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out
operations against the PKK positions in the country’s troubled
southeastern border region as well as Iraq’s semi-autonomous
Kurdistan region and northern Syria.

Iran
says it expects to award at least 10 new contracts for the
development of oil and gas projects to international energy companies
in the near future

Gholam-Reza
Manouchehri, the deputy for development and engineering affairs of
the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), was quoted by the domestic
media as saying that 12 contracts had already been awarded to
companies since the removal of sanctions against Iran in January.

Manouchehri
emphasized that Iran’s oil sector projects were particularly
attractive to global investors given the low risks as well as the low
costs involved.

“The
costs of producing oil and gas in Iran are very low compared to other
countries,” he told Iran’s IRNA news agency. “This has
already increased the motivation of international companies to
approach Iran’s oil and gas projects”.

The first
major contract that Iran awarded after the removal of the sanctions
was one for the development of Phase 11 of the country’s South Pars
gas field. The contract was awarded in November to a consortium
led by France’s Total. Another major contract was one that was
shortly afterwards signed with the global energy giant Shell for
studying three major oil and gas fields in southern Iran.

For multiple
years, Iran was under a draconian US-led regime of sanctions that
banned investments by international companies in the country’s oil
sector projects among other numerous restrictions.

The
sanctions were lifted in January after a nuclear deal that Iran
sealed with the five permanent members of the Security Council plus
German – the so-called P5+1 group of countries – came into
effect.

The deal
envisaged certain steps by Iran to restrict some aspects its nuclear
energy activities in return for moves by the P5+1 to lift certain
economic sanctions against the country.

Bolivian
President Evo Morales declared an amnesty for 1,800 prison inmates,
including pregnant women, handicapped people, those with minor
sentences and people awaiting trial.

Morales
pardoned nearly 2000 prisoner with sentences of less than five years,
first-time offenders, prisoners under the age of 28, single mothers
with incarcerated children, prisoners with terminal illnesses and
people with disabilities.

The
presidential decree will not affect those sentenced for grave crimes,
which include homicide charges, terrorism, kidnapping, aggravated
robbery, contraband, corruption, human trafficking, and assault on
state officials.

"The
present decree's aim is to give amnesty and total or partial pardons
to people who have been deprived of their liberty," Morales
told reporters at a press conference in the city of Cochabamba. This
is the fourth time Morales approves statewide pardons.

The decree
is perceived as a measure to fight the overcrowding of prisons:
according to some estimations, almost 15,000 of nation's 10.6 million
people are in prison, with less than one third of them have already
faced trial. This figure represents 0.14% of nation's population; by
comparison, in the US, 0.68% of the population were in prison as of
2013, making it the world's second largest per capita imprisonment
ratio.

The state's
largest prison, San Pedro, is notorious for its inner society formed
by prisoners who have no guards inside, impose their own laws, live
with their families and welcome tourists, who bring them the money.
The government promised to close San Pedro to stop "cocaine
trafficking and other abuses" in 2013, but as of 2016, the
prison is still there.

Another
prison, Palmasola Penitentiary in the city of Santa Cruz, was built
for 800 people but holds 4,800 inmates. On August 23, 2013, a violent
fight broke out, with inmates cutting each other with knives and
machetes and finally burning each other using fire extinguishers
filled with gas. The riot ended with a massive fire. Thirty-one
people died in the melee, including a one-year-old child, and 37 were
injured. Over the next few days, four more people died from their
burns, bringing the total number of fatalities to 35.

"The
government isn't interested in people who go to prison, neither is
most of society," Human Rights Ombudsman Hernán Cabrera
said in 2015, when Pope Francis visited Palmasola Penitentiary during
his visit to Bolivia. "We see prison as a dump. It's the
final dump, and we send people there to rot. We don't give them a
second chance."

The Russian
center for Syrian reconciliation at the Hmeymim airbase registered a
total of 28 violations of the ceasefire regime in Syria in the last
24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday.

"A
total of 28 ceasefire violations by illegal militant groups have been
registered in Damascus (16), Aleppo (8), Hama (2), and Daraa (2)
provinces," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on
its website.

The Jabhat
Fatah Al-Sham, formerly known as Nusra Front, and the Islamic State
terrorist groups, which have been outlawed in Russia, are not part of
the ceasefire deal.

26 December, 2016

Just when we
thought it couldn't get worse with the recruitment of the Wall Street mafia by Donald Trump, he does
everything he can to make sure that the US plutocracy will secure its
interests at the expense of the US middle class. With such a cabinet,
it's a matter of time to see the US middle class completely vanished.

The
reqruitment of another plutocrat and fanatic supporter of
deregulation proves now, beyond doubt, that Trump is here to continue
the neoliberal pro-establishment agenda for the benefit of his
billionaire class.

President-elect
Donald Trump’s transition team has announced that Carl Icahn, the
Wall Street tycoon responsible for destroying the airline company
TWA, will play a key role advising him on regulatory reform.

[...]

Not
surprisingly, the choice is being harshly criticized. Democratic
National Committee spokesman Eric Walker told USA Today on Wednesday
that Icahn “will also be in charge of overseeing regulatory
overhauls while simultaneously controlling or owning stock in
companies that could benefit from the changes he makes.” Walker
later added that “the corrupt nature of this arrangement cannot
be understated. Voters who wanted Trump to drain the swamp just got
another face full of mud.”

[...]

Icahn
[saved] Trump’s Taj Mahal casino from bankruptcy in the 1990s and,
much to Trump’s dismay, backed a hostile takeover of Trump
Entertainment Resorts as it entered bankruptcy restructuring.

[...]

Icahn
is perhaps most notorious for breaking up the airline company TWA.
After taking over the company in 1985 by buying more than 20 percent
of the company’s stock, Icahn gradually stripped it of its assets
so he could profit off of it. In 1988, he took the company private,
earning $469 million while leaving the company with $540 million in
debt; in 1991, he sold TWA’s London routes to American Airlines for
$445 million, which one former pilot described as a “killer” for
the company to St. Louis Magazine in 2006; and from 1992 to 1993, TWA
filed for bankruptcy so that its creditors could own 55 percent of
the company, which earned Icahn $190 million.

25 December, 2016

French
presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said that NATO exists only ‘to
serve Washington’s objectives’, and that she planned to hold a
Brexit-style referendum, in an interview with a Greek newspaper.

Le Pen, the
leader of France's far-right National Front and a candidate for the
2017 presidential elections, is known for her Euroscepticism and
anti-immigrant views. Together with France, she also suggested that
Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece and Cyprus should also leave
the European Union.

“Frexit
will be a part of my policy,” she said in an interview with
Dimokratia. “The people must have the opportunity to vote for
the liberation from slavery and blackmail imposed by technocrats in
Brussels to return sovereignty to the country.”

Along with
her main rival, the center-right Francois Fillon, Le Pen has called
for closer ties with Russia and has criticized NATO expansion into
eastern Europe. Le Pen said that she would take France out of the
alliance if she became president because, as she said, its existence
is no longer needed.

“It was
established when there was a risk from the Warsaw Pact and the
expansionism of the communist Soviet Union,” said Le Pen. “The
Soviet Union no longer exists, and neither does the Warsaw Pact.
Washington maintains the NATO presence to serve its objectives in
Europe.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova extended her condolences to the victims and their families. She especially mentioned humanitarian activist Elizaveta Glinka, saying she was the “embodiment of dignity in our country.” Glinka was a “social and political activist, but she was outside any politics, above any politics,” Zakharova added.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has expressed his condolences, saying that “the tragic news of the Russian Defense Ministry's plane crash has echoed with pain in my heart,” adding that he is praying for the victims and their loved ones.

Relatives of the crash victims have started to arrive in Sochi, as well as psychologists who are assisting them, a local official told Interfax. The navigator pilot of the crashed Tu-154 plane was part of a crew that managed to safely land an out-of-control aircraft back in 2011.

China
on Friday called on the United States to take the lead in cutting
nuclear weapons after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump used Twitter
to propose the expansion of his country's nuclear capabilities.

"The
world's largest nuclear stockpile country should take the lead in
making substantial cuts to its nuclear arsenal so as to create
conditions for total elimination of nuclear weapons,"
foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Friday in response to
Trump's tweet.

Trump
tweeted Thursday that the United States must greatly strengthen and
expand its nuclear capabilities until such time as the world comes to
its senses regarding nukes.

Hua
said that the United States, as the country with the world's largest
nuclear stockpile, bears special and primary responsibilities in
nuclear disarmament. China always stands for and advocates complete
prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons, she said.

Although
China's response could be considered quite mild, the fact that it
came very quickly, justifies to some extent what has been estimated
in blog's article, that “the Chinese continuously upgrade their
military forces, as well as, their nuclear arsenal, partly because of
the stupid neocon policy, adopted by Obama, that makes them feel
directly threatened and quite nervous.”

After
all, the Chinese could consider Trump's tweet as a warning against
North Korea and even take advantage of the situation. They could
calmly agree that nukes should be prohibited for non major powers
that could act irresponsibly, showing that the consideration of China
as a major power should not be disputed.

It
was also quite weird that, at the same time, Putin made some very
friendly statements concerning Trump.

As
also mentioned in blog's article, “What would be the 'right
approach' for the neocons who are running out of time in this brutal
race? It would be, probably, to focus primarily on China, which is
indeed the biggest economic threat, but doesn't have the military
power (like Russia) to confront the US. [...] it seems that Donald is
following such an approach! He appears to be conciliatory concerning
Putin, but continuously provokes the Chinese! Everything shows that
Trump is determined to continue the Obama 'Pivot to Asia' anti-China
legacy, but this would be also his biggest mistake.”

But,
again, Putin is not naive to drop China for the sake of Donald.
Especially when he sees NATO military forces concentrating next to
Russian borders and the Western sanctions still active.

The
United Nations on Thursday estimated that thousands of people still
remain in eastern Aleppo as evacuations escorted by the Syrian Arab
Red Crescent (SARC) and the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) continued overnight and throughout the day in the besieged
northern Syrian city, a UN spokesman told reporters.

"While
operations are ongoing, the evacuation is believed to be in its final
stage," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily
news briefing here. "The UN estimates that thousands more
remain in eastern Aleppo enclaves."

Since
Wednesday night, UN monitors at the Ramouseh government checkpoint in
Aleppo observed thousands of people departing from eastern Aleppo
mainly in private vehicles that struggled to advance due to a snow
storm and sub-zero temperatures, Haq said. Overall, ICRC estimates
that more than 34,000 people have been evacuated from the besieged
neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo since Dec. 15.

According
to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of Dec. 21, 435 wounded
and sick had been evacuated, of whom 95 patients in critical
conditions had been transferred to Turkey, others were transferred to
hospitals in Idlib and in rural western Aleppo, Haq noted.

"Protection
of civilians leaving these areas remains the biggest concern,"
he said. "The process for evacuation was traumatic, with
crowding, and vulnerable people waiting for hours and exposed to
sub-zero temperatures." "All remaining civilians
must be allowed to safely leave should they choose to do so,"
he said. "Access to people in need to provide them with
life-saving humanitarian assistance is also urgently needed."

The
evacuation is part of a deal concluded recently between Russia and
Turkey. It included the evacuation of civilians from the Shiite towns
of Kafraya and Foa, which are besieged by the rebels in the
northwestern province of Idlib. It came as the Syrian army was on a
crushing offensive against the rebel-held part of Aleppo, which
resulted in wresting back control over 99 percent of eastern Aleppo.
The evacuation operation has been ongoing since last Thursday, and
the rebels were leaving in buses and cars through the Ramouseh
crossing south of Aleppo toward rebel-held areas in the southwestern
countryside of Aleppo.